A blog calling the Cracked staff out on their poor handling of what will go down in Cracked history as the "John Cheese Incident."

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Random Quotes From The Cheese Forum Thread

"People on here, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook have all been pretty receptive of it so far. Given, they're also going to be a bit biased because most of the people are on my friends lists because they're fans of the column." Guess who?

36 comments:

Title: Re: John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus (JC's Column)Post by: DelMarch on November 30, 2012, 08:51 PMThis would be like some kind of surreal Monty Python skit if it weren't so sad.

John, most of the commenters on your articles don't hate you or mock you. Most of them LOVE you. Most of them have been touched by your stength and courage in going through some horrible life grinder ever since you were born and yet still managing to reclaim your life and shape it to your will. Most of them have enjoyed your Big Bro attitude, sharing with us some of your hard-won wisdom. Many have cried or at least shuddered inside when you spoke of some of the horrible things you endured, and they cheered when you shared the good things in your life. And above all, most have enjoyed your down-to-earth wit, and your ability to say one terribly serious thing in one sentence and then make us crack up uncontrollably in the next.

So yes, I repeat: most of your commenters LOVE you.

They also, additionnally, enjoy having some fun together. There are regulars there, so it's only natural that a community spirit should have built over time. Every time you post, the same regulars gather around you to listen avidly to your story, and then they start discussing animatedly among themselves. Some of it is about what you said (generally positive), and some of it is just having fun: making jokes, trading puns, sharing useful info, and so on. Surprisingly enough, quite a few people have observed that by and large, the Cracked comments are of a much higher caliber than many other places on the net; trolls and other idiots generally don't last long before being laughed or ridiculed away. The Cracked commenters are, after all, trained by the Cracked writers.

So, your commenters in general very much like two things:1. You.2. Having fun together.

And there you came and said that:1. You despise them for being commenters.2. You despise them for having fun exchanging not-professional jokes.

You hurt them, John. You hurt them bad. These are real people, who respect(ed) you as a person, and enjoy(ed) your work, and you hurt them, for the simple reasons that they comment on your articles and they enjoy humour you don't like.

As an aside:* Everyone who posts somewhat often on the internet receives death threats. I have, even though almost nobody knows me.* Make no mistake: a good part of the people who friended you in the last 24 hours, whether on Twitter or Facebook, are simply vultures who caught the smell of wank and are just eagerly waiting for you to have a very public break-down. * You can bet that there's a substantial overlap between the people trolling you with hate messages and the people who follow you or share your posts. You can also bet that some of the people who troll you with one account also send you fake supportive messages with another, in order to precipitate your break-down. It's all a VERY classic strategy in fandom, especially with minor celebrities like you: bombard someone with polarising messages ("You rock! Don't listen to the trolls!" vs. "You suck! Go die!"), assemble the troops and the public by spreading the message, and then enjoy the fireworks.

In short, you're being set up. Please don't fall for this.

And please be again our Big Bro who shares his hard-earned wisdom with us and makes us feel like, yeah Life sucks, but we're not going down without one hell of a fucking fight!

Also, you won't find this comment if you go look on the forum now. That account was banned (precisely for defending the commenters on the forum), and the comments deleted. But I "Printed" the forum thread right after posting my third and last comment. You can download it there:

I didn't edit anything...J/K! Just dlled and read it. He actually sounds reasonable in the beginning. Either it all went to his head, he knows he's bulletproof because he's Wong's BFF, or he's relapsing. Relapsing doesn;t mean just drinking again, it's also slipping into the mindset of drinking again, (inappropriate anger, extreme irritability and OVERBLOWN FEELINGS OF GRANDIOSITY). Sound familiar at all?

Quite frankly, I really don't understand what happened. He was clearly trolling at first, and then at some point he completely lost it. And contrary to what he says, it's not the death threats that made him snap, because he was laughing them off on his Twitter. So what happened??

He could have gone on ignoring the comments section as usual. And even when people started showing up on the forum to complain, he could have trotted out the usual excuse, "I make JOKES. It was a JOKE. If you can't take a joke, what are you doing reading my articles?" And we would have been left to stew in our frustration.

Instead of that, he and Wong went on a rampage which attracted even MORE attention to the whole mess than our complaints had done. Why?? Why would they do that? Why didn't they just ignore us or laugh us off? That's the part I don't get.

Somewhere deep down, I want to believe that it's because someone higher up figured we had a point and that Cheese's little "joke" could be really bad PR for Cracked, and that this is why Cheesewong suddenly decided that the death threats had traumatised Cheese... but I'm afraid your theory sounds far more plausible :(

This makes me really sad for Cheese, because I know first hand just how damaging a fucked-up childhood can leave you even well into your adulthood, and how incredibly hard it can be to deal with having to basically break down and rebuild everything within yourself - and even when you think you're done, you discover there's yet another layer under it to work on... This is all horribly stressful, and when we break under pressure, it's just awful. So if this is what happened to Cheese, then I'm sad for him - and quite frankly, I'm a bit mad at his friends, especially Wong. When a friend loses it, you take them off the scene, you get them professional help, and you go into damage control mode; what you DON'T do is encourage their delusions!

*shakes head* Either Cheese is a pure asshole, or he's a very broken man (or both)... Great. Not.

Somebody actually pointed out the reason, I think. To paraphrase, the article has the highest-ever upvoted comments and all were anti-Cheese, in some respect. Even a forumdweller said he thought Cheese had alienated his viewers. Which he did, duh.

I don't know... I mean, I just can't see how Darkie's comment being so massively upvoted was any kind of threat to Cheese, you know? These comments were pro-Darkie, not anti-Cheese, really. Plus, the whole thing was mostly tongue-in-cheek anyway. It was certainly nothing serious enough to send anyone into a rage!

In fact, among other things I've screencapped, are the most popular comments (the ones which survived the apocalypse until yesterday anyway), and the common point to all of them is that they are humourous! People fake-crying, fake-rubbing their hurt butt, fake-lamenting their despair that Cheese will never love them, and of course all the ones trying to cram as many "sins" as possible into a single comment :D The point is: they are all JOKES! There's nothing whatsoever to get angry about in there.

As for you starting a blog: remember, if Cheesewong hadn't over-reacted in the forums in the first place, you wouldn't have made the blog. So it's not you creating the blog which precipitated their meltdown, it's the other way around.

So I keep going back to the original question: why did the meltdown happen at all? Cheese doesn't even mind admitting that he's an asshole, so the only thing for him to do was to ignore us, or laugh at us and brush us off. And it was the EASY thing to do, too.

Because he's emotionally immature. A well-known saying in rehab is: You stop aging emotionally the day you start self-medicating, as opposed to "social drinking". Something bad happens in your life? If you're not an alcoholic/addict you deal with it and move on, maturing in the process. With an a/a, it's just the opposite, you never deal with it because you're numb. (Yes, I'm an alcoholic). Hmm, maybe I should create a topic explaining his actions from an alcoholic's point-of-view? What do you think?

Well... On one hand, I don't want to put you through that, but then again you're the one offering.

I also don't want us to start playing armchair psychologists too liberally, but this isn't what you would be doing since you would be speaking from a place of experience and not just learned knowledge.

And I really, really want to understand... So yes, I think I would very much appreciate you taking the time to explain Cheese's actions from an alcoholic's point-of-view.

PS: I know you're an alcoholic, I watched your video. I didn't comment on it because... well, because it breaks my heart, and I get dust in my eyes every time I try to gather my thoughts to put them in words. I'll just say this for now: you're a damn great man, Randy. I'm sure you have your asshole sides, like we all do, but you certainly have huge redeeming qualities! (... Stupid dust, where are you coming from??)

Title: Re: John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus (JC's Column)Post by: John Cheese on December 01, 2012, 10:18 AMRead up on the last two comments before yours. See how neither of those people said they didn't like the article without following it up with blatant insults? "Seriously, there weren't any jokes" when obviously there were, and literally thousands of people have said it was the funniest thing I've written, including the people who pay my fucking check. See how the other one flat out said it sucked? See how one of them named himself "OhJonnNo"? See how they're trying to pass off bullshit barbs and insults as "constructive feedback"? See how it's not changing one fucking word that I'm writing?

Guess where those people came from? Of all the people who have contacted me from that tiny, tiny section of the internet, I'd say two of them haven't been this bullshit. It's always this bullshit. Always, always, always. And this is the mild stuff.

I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE COMMENTS SECTION. If you don't like that, stop reading my articles. Call me an asshole, hate me, report me to the police. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, goddamn motherfucking ever go into the comments section. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

But I do want to apologize to that one guy who demanded it. Here you go: Go fuck yourself. If calling out puns and memes pisses you off, you're too fucking stupid to get what I'm writing. And you're proving my point by being an insulting piece of shit in the one place I'll actually have an exchange with you about this subject.

Good job, guys. You totally changed my mind about the comments section!

Typical Cheese, after we all know that he reads the comments. Otherwise, why get pissed?

I'm not saying he's drinking, but as you said, there's such a thing as a dry relapse. I really don't want to focus on that aspect of Cheese--I think it's off topic and going in the wrong direction--but all I could think about reading that was "angry drunk writing". Dripping with it. Like many of us, I know what I'm talking about.

This post was part of what I referred to as "the incoherent, frothing-at-the-mouth raging, and all the hypocritical accusations, and the refusal to listen" on Reddit :/ This post was his answer to my post telling him that the commenters love him... So yeah, "disturbing" is a very apt descriptor :(

I'm cleaning up bullshit from people who are directly from that comments section that "isn't as bad as you think" and every message I delete and every account that I ban is another nail in that debate's coffin. Every time someone replies with something like this, thinking they're in some sort of meaningful debate (it isn't), it makes it worse. And I'm not talking about "I didn't like your article." I'm talking about full on threats and flat-out vandalism.

This conversation is done. I'm not fucking around with this stupid, childish bullshit anymore. I don't like the comments section because of (among the reasons I've already stated) bullshit exactly like what you're doing right now. The fact that you don't understand (you've stated it repeatedly in your last post) is the problem, and I'm not going to sit here and type replies with you about it. My opinion is out there. Yep, I detest the fucking comments section. You aren't going to change that. But I at least have enough goddamn respect for the comments section to bitch about them in my own setting, on my own Twitter and my own section of the boards, without going directly into their playground and saying, "Here I am! You all suck!"

At least show me the same respect. Or do you fucking idiots not see this as a two way deal? I should come around to your line of thinking, but under no circumstances will you consider the opposite?

I'm not joking, I've had enough of this bullshit. The next person who comes in here bitching about the comments section is banned. I don't care if you've been here since the early 2000s. If you're a comments section person, and you don't agree with my stance on it, bitch about me in the comments section. If you're a person from the boards, and you hate the comments section, bitch about it on my other outlets. But we're absolutely finished clogging up this thread with this ridiculous, meaningless, cry-fest.

Except we CAN'T bitch about it in the comments section if you ban us all, now can we, hmmm? And if we go to the other sites and don't suck your dick JUST RIGHT, we get blocked/deleted. Stay classy, asshole.

Title: Re: John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus (JC's Column)Post by: DelMarch on December 01, 2012, 11:48 AMQuote from: John Cheese on Today at 11:32 AMBut I at least have enough goddamn respect for the comments section to bitch about them in my own setting, on my own Twitter and my own section of the boards, without going directly into their playground and saying, "Here I am! You all suck!"

You mean like when you specifically posted an article to rile them up, as you explained on your Facebook?

QuoteAt least show me the same respect.

Show me where I insulted you. ME, not someone else from the comments section.

YOU insulted ME with your article and your comments here. I never did anything to you.

QuoteI don't just randomly pick out people and decide to be an asshole to them.

Yes, you do. You just did it to me.

I'm honestly, sincerely disappointed to discover that the Big Bro John Cheese I once admired doesn't actually exist, and that all those amazing and uplifting articles you posted were just hypocritical preaching that you don't actually put into practice.

I'll show myself out. Have fun raging and mocking and despising people who once loved you.

Well, Twitter wouldn't work for what I want to do, I hate Faceboook, and it's supposedly much easier to spread a word on Tumblr than on a classic blog. Plus, I've been wanting to play with this new toy (I mean Tumblr) for a while, but I never had anything to say that would work on it, really. So this is the perfect opportunity to try it out :P

... And yes, the fact that it just happens to be the same place Cheese is apparently trying to build himself a "serious" reputation amuses me to no end :D

Step 1: Insist a clean-up of the blog to remove "plants".Step 2: Make the assertion that visitors from a certain other website be polite and respectful.Step 3: Taunt any potential visitors from there while speaking as the new face of the updated website. While also directly insulting those in the Writer's Workshop, another part of said website's community who also mostly don't venture into the forum main and would be mostly unaware of this situation. While also holding up a banner of offense at being generally insulted as a community of your own.

* Removing plants means removing people who do nothing but insult us. If you can discuss without accusing us of being teenagers, for example, Ono is more than willing to talk to you.

* I don't see what the problem is with asking that people who come here to tell us we're wrong-wrong-wrong do so in a polite and respectful manner?

* If you go back to the first post on this blog, look up the posts by DB, who came in to basically tell us that we're not nice for harrassing poor overworked Cheese and Wong. He's a mod on Cracked, and he himself says he spends most of his time in the Writer's Workshop. Hence Ono's quip here.

Now, if you actually have productive points to make, or honest questions to ask, then by all means, do so, and you should get a thoughtful answer.

Oh no, my image is damaged! Now people will think I don't care about comments sections!

Look, I'll bash on comments sections until the day I die -- and the fact that it bothers you says tons about who you are. But the one thing I won't do is go into them and start fights. I bash them on my terms in my sections of the net, and I let them do their thing in theirs. You've taken two shots in here so far, and I've let them both slide. The first one was the fart/jar comment. The second was "they are just some people with a too high conceit of themselves who think everyone else is beneath them" and then just flat out claim that they've never read the comments. You can have a differing opinion of me all you want. You can hate my articles. You can hate me as a person. And if you do it in the comments section, you can phrase it however you want, with total free reign over your demeanor. But when you come on these forums, you'll cut the stupid trolling bullshit or you're gone. You came in here, not vice versa. If you don't like those rules, leave. If you can't leave on your own, I can help you with that.